According to the World Health Organization, “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

1. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
2. increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; 
3. and reduced professional efficacy.

Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life,” states the WHO.

Based on my research and my consulting experience in working on the issue of burnout with a number of organizations, I would add the following points:

1. Work stress and home stress overlap

As much as the World Health Organization urges that burnout should only be applied to the “occupational context,” stress (the culprit) does not discriminate in terms of source. Stress, from whatever source, feeds into the same physical and psychological reaction. The conventional wisdom is, “leave your work stress at work and your home stress at home.” That sounds great. The only problem is, that’s impossible. Work-related stress comes home and home-related stress comes to work. It all goes into the same place.

2. Stress can be an inside job (generated internally)

Stressors can be internal as well as external. Recalling an unpleasant interaction with a coworker or thinking about the speeding ticket you just got are examples of internal events, thoughts and recollections, which themselves can trigger the stress reaction. An individual who makes a serious mistake at work and is aware of it may ruminate on the error. “How did I let that happen? What was I thinking?” Those intrusive internal thoughts, the rehashing of the mistake, and similar unpleasant internal thoughts in and of themselves add to the stress. 

3. Burnout’s fallout: physical ailments

While the World Health Organization insists that burnout is not a medical condition per se, burnout does correlate with a wide range of physical ailments (commonly called “stress diseases”).  And it is well documented that burnout correlates significantly with major depressive disorder, which is definitely identified as a form of psychological disorder. 

Risk factors for burnout

So, what determines our risk? My research identifies the following critical factors:

Personality: By our nature, some personalities are more stress-prone than others. Individuals high in the personality factor of Neuroticism are prone to experience the stress reaction more strongly than others. High-N individuals will really want to focus on developing workaround strategies to lower their reactions to stressors.

Workload: No matter how strong the individual’s work ethic is, no matter how committed the individual is, no matter how resilient they are, there is a limit to how much work an individual can do or can do at the level that is expected without experiencing burnout.

Pace of work: In addition to load per se, the speed required in performing one’s job is a stress factor. The faster one must perform, the greater the stress and therefore the greater the risk of burnout.

Unpredictability of the work: Some work requires frequent adaptation and adjustment. Like first responders, many supervisors also describe their work as a “firefight.” They may have their workday planned out, and ideally, they do, but then things just happen, requiring rapid adjustment and adding to the stress.

Level of responsibility/consequences: When an individual has a high level of responsibility at work, their stress level will likely be high, other things equal. Think about surgeons, airline pilots, nuclear control room operators, and of course, supervisors.

Lack of autonomy: Research going back many years has demonstrated repeatedly that control vs. lack of control is a huge stress factor. If a worker can at least significantly influence workload and pace, as well as predictability, they can handle a lot without experiencing the stress reaction. But if they can’t influence, much less control those factors, they are likely to experience high levels of stress and thus the risk of burnout.

The pandemic effect: The ravages of Covid affected us all, starting in early 2020. In short, all of the challenges normally faced by workers at all levels across all industries were intensified suddenly and dramatically, and that heightened risk of burnout continues in the post-pandemic era.

All of the above are all stress-inducing, burnout-predicting factors. Much of my current research focuses on the critical role of the frontline supervisor. For many supervisors, all the burnout factors are present in greater or lesser degree. Check the boxes: workload, pace, unpredictability, high level of responsibility, low level of autonomy, pandemic effect.  

Reducing the risk

There are three main levels of attack on the burnout challenge:

1. Personal Strategies: Self-care and health-promoting strategies strengthen the body and mind and buffer the effects of prolonged, unmanaged stress. Sleep (and rest), diet, exercise, avoiding drugs and alcohol (at least minimizing the latter). These are the most commonly recommended stress-management/ burnout- avoidance strategies. Helpful as they are, they do not address the root causes of burnout.

2. Social support: Talking it out with family and trusted friends or coworkers is widely acknowledged in stress-management literature as a main coping strategy. Helpful as it is, it also does not address the root causes of burnout.

3. Systems change: This is the biggie. If the structure of the job requires a heavy load and fast pace, constant adaptation to changing conditions, heavy responsibility along with low autonomy, plus some pandemic hangover, that job is set up to be stressful. As I noted, there are limits to what self-care and social support can do to offset the grind. A more effective long-term strategy is this: look at the policies and procedures that set up conditions for the ongoing stress in the first place and work to minimize or eliminate them. I have led many workflow analyses which inevitably discover unnecessary and avoidable duplications, non-value-added steps, logjams, hurry-up-and-waits, bad handoffs, and the like, all of which add to the stress load.

If the system itself generates excessive stress, all the self-care and social support in the world, valuable as they are, won’t fix the problem. The ultimate difference-making strategy is to change the system.